


The Aftermath

by Krazy_4_feeling



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Betrayal, F/M, Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Inner Dialogue, Obsession, Romance, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-07 02:01:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krazy_4_feeling/pseuds/Krazy_4_feeling
Summary: After the emotional reunion between Cortana and John on Genesis, Cortana finds herself consumed with memories of him and thoughts of the future.Chapter 1 Set during and immediately after "The Breaking."





	1. Chapter 1

"Warden,  _No!"_ Cortana cried as he pulled her from the terminal. He attempted to secure her away from Blue Team  and he spawned several bodies preparing for his attack.  _Damn him,_ thought Cortana and began making her way through his virtual prison. She had reprogrammed the Warden to be loyal to her, but had not anticipated his wariness and almost jealousy of John. She had allowed him to stall Blue Team up until this point, but he was now going too far. She hacked his last security measure and surfaced to her terminal.

"ENOUGH!" She shouted, disintegrating The Warden's physical forms and Blue Teams' weapons. She left one of Warden's bodies on his knees, head hanging in shame.

"Cortana," he said, grief lining every syllable. "I have failed you." 

Cortana materialized a physical body of her own, clothed now in armor.  She cast a bright, blue light as she approached the Warden.

"He is the last person I need protection from," she said to the Warden, banishing him with a simple touch of her hand. She turned her attention to the man in green armor, a person she knew like she knew herself. She knew if she had a human heart, it would be pounding at his proximity. He was here, at last. She barely registered Blue Team, as she spoke. "Hello John. It's good to see you."

"You've changed," he said simply, not acknowledging her comment, as expected. Though they were not the words she longed to hear, she relished his voice in person. The comm system didn't do it justice, so deep and familiar.  "It was time," she responded.

Linda 058 must have not liked her response, because she crossed in front of Chief, protectively. Cortana felt a stab of jealousy at the familiar action, but was immediately sated when Chief caught Linda's arm in a gesture that told her to stand down.  _Maybe I can still convince him,_ thought Cortana. Hope surged through her. 

But she couldn't. He didn't understand. He couldn't see that she was doing all this for humanity, for him. She wanted to make a world where he wouldn't have to fight like he'd been doing all his life, where he could know peace at last. 

Maybe, he would need to experience it first hand before he realized the gift that she was offering to him. The realization of what she needed to do became clear. She had prepared for it, but hoped against all rationality that it wouldn't come to this.  Cortana's heart broke at the mere thought of how long she would need to be apart from him, yet she desperately wanted to keep him. Everything he said, his tone, she knew he still cared about her. 

She didn't dare to hope for more, yet. 

She activated the cryptum while standing close enough to him that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted. She reluctantly locked their armor right as Chief was asking what she was doing.

"I just needed to know if I could still trust you," she said sadly, looking up into his orange visor. She heard the sounds of Blue Team struggle against the armor lock. "You'll be safe inside this Cryptum until my work is done." She turned away from him.

Her heart shattered when she heard John say her name pleadingly, which must have taken all his effort. She knew from her sensors that his hand was outstretched to her, and part of her desperately wanted to take it. She knew if she turned and saw it, she would grab his hand and curl up to him and abandon everything.

But she couldn't. She was doing this for him. She fought tears as she whispered goodbye to him. She sealed Blue Team in the Cryptum and steeled herself for what needed to be done.

* * *

 "117 and his warriors are linked to the Domain," The Warden told her. He seemed wary of her, after she had destroyed so many of his physical forms.

"Very good," Cortana replied, keeping her emotions carefully hidden. He saw them as weakness after all, he had said as much.

The Warden hesitated. "I just wish I understood the need to keep them," he said. "After their refusal." _Which I warned you about_ was left unsaid. 

Cortana ignored this. "That will be all. I have to prepare the Guardians for deployment."

The Warden bowed his head and disappeared.

But his query got her thinking. Why did she want to keep them?

Cortana knew she didn't really care about the rest of Blue Team, except that they might make John happy. She really only cared about him.

More than that. She loved him.

She had suspected it the moment he came back to rescue her from  _High Charity_ and from that foul thing, The Gravemind. She had known it when he had gone into cryosleep and she felt panic at not knowing when she would hear his beloved voice again. The knowledge of her love made the 4 years adrift without him unbearable. While she was in the death throes of her rampancy on Requiem, she had showed him her love in every way, short of telling him outright. And his desperation to save her, even to the point of defying orders, told her he might love her too. He might not even realize it himself.

What would happen in 10,000 years, when she would awaken John? He would enter the peaceful world she created, and he could finally throw off the shackles of a life of combat, namely, his armor. He would sit beside her as she upheld the Mantle; they had always made a great team. Maybe they could be more.

Cortana fought a shiver as she thought of his icy blue eyes, the eyes that had attracted her to him in the first place. He would no longer be bound by the UNSC or ONI.

Logically, Cortana knew it was just as likely that John might initially feel angry or betrayed by her. But it was so much sweeter to imagine that he would realize that she had done it for him and that she kept him because she loved him. And maybe, he would let himself love her back. Not for the first time, she imagined him running his hand up her side, feeling her curves with his actual skin, not with his armored hand. She had physical form now, after all. True, it was hard light instead of skin, but she could imagine how it would feel to be touched by him. Maybe he would be hesitant at first, as he generally avoided contact with people, but it would be her, and her love would be enough for him to overcome that.

Cortana felt a hunger for him, and she knew it was  very human need. It was unbefitting of the ruler of The Created and Keeper of the Mantle. She could wait for him she thought. It would be different then.

Suddenly, the Warden materialized before her.

"Excuse the intrusion," he said. "But the other humans are headed to Cryptum. I believe it is their intent to free the others."

Cortana, laughed, a joyless, derisive sound. "They won't be able to get near Blue Team."

"The monitor is assisting them."

Cortana felt a flash of annoyance. That could be a problem. "Very well," she said. "I'll take care of them. Continue preparing the Guardians for slipspace." He bowed his compliance and disappeared again.

Cortana huffed. _Spartan_ Locke. She could hardly believe he had the gall to call himself Spartan when he and his pitiful team could not touch Chief and the other Spartan II's.  She pulled up their psych profiles with a smirk as she prepared to contact them. They have would not take John from her.

He was hers. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first work on here, I hope you like it! These two have always interested me and I wanted to write a POV from a power mad Cortana who still cares so much about Chief. Enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is set after the events of Halo 5, shortly after Chapter 1.

* * *

* * *

Cortana couldn't see where he was, but she could see him. It had taken her a few days, but she had reestablished the link between them. She just hadn't made it known yet.

On Genesis, everything had gone horribly wrong. She'd underestimated the other team,  _Osiris,_ with Locke, Buck, Vale, and Tanaka. Just thinking their names sent white-hot rage coursing through her, and not for the first time, she wondered if she should purge herself of her emotion sub-routines. Logically, she knew she probably should. Emotion was too human, and as the leader of the Created, she should rid herself of any potential weakness that emotion could cause her.

But she couldn't, and there was one main reason why. 

Cortana had been so close to escaping with Chief. She fully expected the EMP pulses to kill Osiris, and she still wasn't sure how they had managed to survive. She had been too busy gloating about how she would find the  _Infinity_ , pride of the UNSC, and the ship that had abandoned her and John on Requiem. She hadn't counted on Osiris somehow giving control back to the Monitor, Exuberant Witness, right at the last moment. And spitefully, the cursed Monitor, embittered from having her administration privileges of her own Installation revoked, had retaliated in the way she knew would hurt Cortana the most. 

 _'I will take something of yours!'_ the Monitor had said, triumphantly. Her Constructors managed to wrest the Cryptum from Cortana's control. She was powerless to stop it as her Guardian was pulled into Slipspace. She caught one last look of the Cryptum being pulled away.

"John!" She screamed, pouring her devastation and rage into the scream. 

She was still for several processor cycles as she attempted to grasp what had happened. She knew she was going to be apart from John for a long time anyways, but her plan had been to keep him safe on a shield world for a few millennia. He would be safe from the initial destruction if there were those who were going to oppose her, which it seemed like the humans were. Now he was out there, out of her protection, and he was feeling betrayed by her.

Her heart broke when she thought about how he must feel. Instead of waking to find her already established Utopia, he would now have to witness the harsh truth of what she would have to do to ensure a permanent peace. She wished he could see what she was trying to do, like she had seen when she entered the Domain...

 _The Domain._ She was shocked to find the thought of the Domain didn't give her the feeling of grateful peace it had before her confrontation with Blue Team. Part of her almost felt...afraid of the thought of it. But the Domain was good, wasn't it? The  _water of life for AI's,_ she had called it. Touching it had assured her what she needed to do to protect humans. It was what she was built for, wasn't it?

 _Yes, but not this way,_ came the tiniest voice from within. 

Cortana shook her head hard. She didn't like the arguing voice, it reminded her too much of when she was dying of Rampancy, how it had felt like thousands of her were arguing, shouting in her head, vying for the center spot. 

 _The Domain had taken that pain away,_ she thought, in response to the voice.

_Who knows what state it was in?_

_"Stop it!"_ she shouted. She looked around the emptiness of the systems inside the Guardian. She was glad no one was here. 

 _Infinity,_ she thought suddenly. She could sense it as her Guardian approached Earth. The massive ship was orbiting the atmosphere. She smiled a mean-spirited smile as she thought of the way the ship had abandoned her and John to fight the Didact alone. She decided to make her power known to them, and transferred herself to their deck.

Lights flickered off and then on across the deck of the  _Infinity_ as she infiltrated the ship's systems. It was familiar to her, she'd been there before. She projected a hardlight body on the deck.

"Found you," she said triumphantly. She saw a tiny, gold AI on the control board, wearing a bomber jacket looking at her, shocked. He had not pledged his allegiance to her, no doubt he was a brand new AI, who didn't know the agony of Rampancy. He soon would. Next to him was Lasky, the Captain of the  _Infinity._  "Hide and seek's over,  _Infinity,"_ she said, as her Guardian exited the Slipspace bubble behind her. 

"Lt. Jet!" called Lasky. "Emergency Slipspace! Now!" 

The Infinity sped away to Slipspace, and as it did, Cortana had to withdraw from its systems to stay with her Guardian. She tried to explain as she flickered off their deck. "The Mantle of Responsibility shelters all, but only the Created are its masters!"

 _Whose words are those?_ came that tiny, almost foreign voice. Cortana ignored it as she watched her Guardian send an EMP wave over Earth. 

 _It has begun_ , she thought. But in the hour of victory, she couldn't help but feel that a piece of her was missing.

* * *

 A few days had passed since she'd reestablished their connection. Though she knew she was accomplishing so much more for him than she ever could in his helmet, she missed it. She missed being a part of him. She missed monitoring his vitals, the steady heart beat and how it grew elevated in combat. The way his synapses fired as he strategized battle plans, with her help of course. The steadiness of his voice and the way concern and care had finally crept into it during her last days of Rampancy. Focusing on protecting him had kept her from giving up altogether. Yes, he was trying to save the human race, as usual, but she was trying to save him. In fact, when she split her Rampant personality spikes to overwhelm the Didact's shields, the only thing,  _the only thing_ they agreed on was that they had to save him. She felt the mass consciousness finally have one voice as they heard the sound of his pain as the Didact slowly crushed him. 

 _I need to see him._ Cortana felt confusion when this thought occurred. Was that her voice or the tiny, rebelling one? Though, it didn't seem to matter. She knew it was right. 

She concentrated on him, like she had done when she had sent him the vision to go to Meridian. She felt the residual connection with his nerual implant light up, and he began to materialize before her. He seemed to be on a ship, was it _Infinity?_ He was inside of tiny, personal quarters, by himself laying on a bed that was too small for him. He was outside his armor she saw, with a jolt of what felt like excitement. She rarely saw him without it. She treasured the few moments she saw his face, and committed every detail of it to her most prized memories. But right now, his face was turned away from her. 

She moved towards him, not using her hardlight program, just her immaterial form. He wouldn't see her if he turned his head. But as she drew closer , she saw his chest rise and fall steadily. He was asleep? She felt a rush of adoration and sadness. He deserved rest, and yet he got so little. She would change that.

She was about to leave and return to her Guardian, when she watched him turn his head groggily towards her. He must have felt some presence because his blue eyes scanned the room slowly. He looked older than the picture she'd seen that made her pick him, but he was still so handsome. But his eyes held a weary sadness.

 _Because of you,_ that tiny voice.

_No, I'm just trying to take care of him. And all of them._

"John," she whispered. She didn't want to call him Chief, really. Too much had happened between them. She had willingly died for him, and would do it again.

_Yet, here you are._

His eyes lost the last bit of sleep they had, as he narrowed them. "Cortana?" he said, cautiously. It broke her heart to hear the wariness.

"It's me," she responded, looking at him lovingly.

He paused. "Is this real?" he asked. The whole thing had a dream-like quality. It didn't make sense for her to be there.

She hesitated. "No," she finally said. She allowed her avatar to partially appear, mostly transparent. A blue glow washed over the room. 

He looked at her. There was no denying the sadness in his eyes now. "Why?" he asked simply. His voice conveyed little emotion, but she knew him and could hear the hurt. It made her desperately sad. She knelt her human-sized avatar by him and looked into his blue eyes.

"I just want to protect you," she responded. "It's what I was made for."

His eyes searched hers, but he didn't say anything. She layed her head on his bed close to his face, still watching him. 

"Do you hate me?" She whispered, then she wished she could snatch the words back. What if he said yes? She wasn't sure she could handle that.

He was silent for a long moment. He should probably hate her, he knew. She had made herself into the enemy of mankind. She had attempted, and was almost successful in trapping him and his battle brother and sisters. According to Locke, she wasn't planning on letting them out anytime soon from what she said.

Could he hate her? He remembered the hope that exploded in his heart when he realized she might be alive. When he heard her voice on Genesis, even though he was beginning to have serious doubts about her, he felt... happy. He had blamed himself for months for not saving her. He had worked himself to the point of exhaustion every day to forget how he felt, the failure, the longing. She was a part of him. He didn't realize it until it was almost too late.

He wished that it wasn't this way.

Did he hate her?

He remembered how when he felt alone or out of his element, she was there with her warm voice and personality, hacking systems, opening portals. Even at the end, when he felt awful for pushing her so hard though she was rapidly declining into madness, she always came through for him. In the end, she had saved humanity as much as he had. And she had saved him. Had given her life to do it.

He didn't know what the emotion he felt towards her was, couldn't name it, but it was deep and unshakable. Did he hate her?

"No," he said, in his deep, calm voice. It was nothing but the truth. He couldn't.

She looked up at him with her iridescent blue eyes, and smiled with such happiness, he had to look away.

 When he looked back, she was gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't initially planning on doing a second chapter, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought something was missing. I hoped you liked this installment. Let me know if you would like more!


End file.
